A syntax error means that you have made a mistake while creating your PHP structure. You could, for example, be;
■ Missing a ; at the end of an individual line.
■ Using curly quotation marks.
■ Missing a curly bracket.

When this error appears it will tell you which file the error appears in (functions.php for example) and approximately which line (it may not always be the exact line so be sure to check just before and just after) in the code.

Unexpected

If you are receiving an error which says ‘parse error: unexpected’ this usually means that you have forgotten to include a character. The most common are:
■ Unexpected ‘=’ : you have forgotten to include the $ when referencing a variable
■ Unexpected ‘)’ : you have forgotten to include the opening bracket (
■ Unexpected ‘(‘ : you have forgotten to include the closing bracket )
■ Unepxpected T_STRING: you have forgotten a quotation mark or a semi-colon at the end of the previous line
■ Unexpected T_ELSE: you have an else statement with no opening if statement